450523 - Provide a way to get profile-independent place: URIs

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Dan Mills [:thunder]]

place: URIs currently work only within a given profile, since they may use folder IDs (which are specific to a profile--the same ID may refer to different items across profiles).

There should be a way to request a profile-independent place: URI for e.g. query and shortcut items.  For example, if a query flag is set, such items' uri property could return a specially-formatted URI where any id parameters are GUIDs, not internal IDs.  For example:

place:id={...}&portable=1

would be equivalent to:

place:id=N

(where ID 'N' maps to GUID '{...}' on the profile on which the query is run)

An alternative URI scheme could be:

place:id=N&guid={...}

This has the advantage that it does not overload the 'id' parameter.  However, it has the downside that the id and guid parameters may not refer to the same item (except on the originating profile).  This problem could be solved establishing a priority (e.g., if 'guid' is set, that is looked up first), but it might nonetheless be confusing.

Note 1: This bug assumes GUIDs have been synchronized.  How to synchronize them is out of the scope of this bug.

Note 2: This is similar to what sync clients need to do right now.  That is, clients that sync Places items must currently parse the URI and replace any id attributes with GUIDs, and replace them back on other profiles with their respective IDs on those profiles.

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Bug 451915 - move Firefox/Places bugs to Firefox/Bookmarks and History. Remove all bugspam from this move by filtering for the string "places-to-b-and-h".

In Thunderbird 3.0b, you do that as follows:
Tools | Message Filters
Make sure the correct account is selected. Click "New"
Conditions: Body   contains   places-to-b-and-h
Change the action to "Delete Message".
Select "Manually Run" from the dropdown at the top.
Click OK.

Select the filter in the list, make sure "Inbox" is selected at the bottom, and click "Run Now". This should delete all the bugspam. You can then delete the filter.

Gerv

Comment 2

[BMO Automation]

Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.

Comment 3

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

This has been fixed as of FF 62 with switching from folder=<id> to parent=<guid> in queries, by bug 824502.